by Nora Roberts
The minute her mother was out the door, Bodine dashed toward the back of the house, dragging out her phone. She didn’t stop when she hit the kitchen with its scents of Sunday roast and fresh bread, but punched Chase’s number as she streaked outside again.
“Where are you?” she demanded the second he answered.
“Checking some fences. We’re riding in now. We’re not late.”
“You need to get home right now. Right now, Chase. They found Alice—Mom’s sister, Alice. Is Rory with you?”
“Right here. We’re coming.”
Relieved, she ran back in, up the back stairs. She tore off her dress, grabbed jeans and a shirt. Her mind flashed back to her mother, crying and shaking.
Her mother didn’t have her purse, Bodine realized and, half dressed, dashed into her parents’ room to grab it. She tried to think of what else her mother might need, thought of the state of the kitchen and the meal.
She dragged on the rest of her clothes, called Clementine. Then ran down to meet her brothers.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It felt like a dream. Nothing seemed quite real.
Maureen sat close beside her, gripping her hand, and that was real. That was real. So was her mother holding her other hand.
Cora wondered if they kept her from floating away.
She heard the doctor, but the words he spoke just kept circling in her head, couldn’t seem to take root.
The grandchildren came in. Did she smile at them? They always made her smile, just by being.
Bob Tate was there, standing by. Bob had called her, told her …
Alice.
“I’m sorry.” She struggled through the fog, tried to concentrate on the doctor’s words. “I can’t seem to make my mind work. You’re saying she doesn’t remember who she is?”
“She’s experienced considerable trauma, Mrs. Bodine. Long-term trauma, physical, mental, emotional.”
“Long-term,” Cora repeated, blankly.
“She’d do better with straight talk.” Tate stepped forward, crouched down so his eyes and Cora’s were on level. “It’s looking like somebody held Alice against her will, likely for years. He hurt her, Cora. She’s got scars from him hurting her. Scars on her back from beatings, on her ankle from what I’m going to say looks like a shackle. She was raped, and not long before she was found. She’s had children, honey.”
The shudder, like sharp fingers clawing, ripped right through her. “Children.”
“The doctor said she’s given birth more than once.”
Yes, straight talk, she thought. Better.
Horrible.
“Someone took her, and chained her up, and beat her, raped her. My Alice.”
“Some of the scars are old, and some aren’t so old. He hurt her mind, too. They’ve got a doctor here who’s going to help her with that, just like Dr. Grove’s going to help her.”
Years. She’d lived years and knew how they flew, even when some patches of them crawled like snails.
But years? Her Alice, her child, her baby, held and hurt for years?
“Who did it?” she demanded, the fog burned to cinders by rage. “Who did this to her?”
“I don’t know yet.” Before she could speak again, his hands tightened his grip on hers. “But I can and do promise you, on my life, Cora, I’ll do everything there is to find out, to find him, to make him pay for it. I swear that to you.”
Rage could wait, Cora told herself. The weeping and wailing already churning inside her could wait. Because …
“I need to see my girl.”
“Mrs. Bodine.” Dr. Grove moved in again. “You need to understand she might not recognize you. You need to prepare yourself for that. You need to prepare yourself for her appearance and emotional state.”
“I’m her mother.”
“Yes, but she may not know who you are. You need to be very calm when you go in to her. Your instincts will be to hold her, to ask questions, to expect a response. She may become agitated. If so, you’ll need to leave her alone, give it more time. Can you do that?”
“I can and will do whatever’s best for her, but I need to see her, with my own eyes.”
“She doesn’t look the same,” Tate told her. “You prepare for that, Cora. She doesn’t look or sound like you remember her.”
“I’m going with you.” Maureen got to her feet. “I’ll stay outside the room, but you’re not going by yourself.”
Cora gave her own mother’s hand a squeeze, then rose and took her daughter’s. “I’ll do better knowing you’re there with me.”
“I’ll take you in. Mrs. Bodine,” Grove continued as he led the way, “you need to resist asking her questions about what happened to her, reacting to the signs you’ll see of what’s happened to her. Stay calm. She may not want to be touched, she may not want to talk. Use her name. She’s calling herself Esther.”
“‘Esther’?”
“Yes, but the sheriff continued to call her Alice, and she calmed when he talked to her.”
“Did she know him?”
“I don’t believe so, at least not on a conscious level, but he was able to connect.” Grove paused outside the door. “Sheriff Tate says you’re a strong woman.”
“He’d be right.”
With a nod, Grove opened the door.
In her mind, Alice had stayed the pretty, wild-natured young girl who’d run off to be a movie star. That pretty young girl, and all the stages of that girl before that day.
The little girl in frilly dresses and cowboy boots. The fretful baby she’d rocked late at night. The defiant teenager, the child who’d crawled into bed with her seeking comfort from a bad dream.
The woman in the bed with the bruised face, the dull and graying hair, the hard lines dug in around her mouth and eyes bore little resemblance to those precious images.
Still, Cora thought, she recognized her daughter.
Her heart twisted in her chest, a rag wrung hard, and her legs went weak under her.
Then Maureen tightened her grip on her hand. “I’m right here, Ma. I’ll be right here, right outside.”
Cora straightened her backbone, walked toward the bed.
The woman in the bed cringed back. Her eyes, green as her father’s had been, darted around the room with terror chasing behind them.
Some nightmares couldn’t be soothed away with cuddles.
“It’s all right now, Alice. Nobody’s going to hurt you. I won’t let anyone hurt you again.”
“Where’s the man? Where’s the…”
“Bob Tate? He’s right outside. He called me to tell me you were here. I’m so happy to see you again, Alice. My Alice.”
“Esther.” Alice hunched in on herself. “I don’t want any more shots. Sir will be very angry. I can’t stay here.”
“I had a teacher named Esther,” Cora made up on the spot. “Esther Tanner. She was so nice. But I named you Alice, for your daddy’s ma. Alice Ann Bodine. My frisky Alley Cat.”
Was it her own blind hope, her own desperate need, or did she see something flicker in those frightened eyes. Carefully, so carefully her bones hurt, she eased onto the side of the bed.
“I used to call you that when you were just a baby, fighting sleep. Oh, you’d fight sleep like it was your fiercest enemy. My Alice never wanted to miss a minute of life.”
“No. Alice was a whore and a trollop. God punished her for wickedness.”
Her heart twisted again, this time with that churning rage, but Cora dammed it up. For later.
“Alice is, and was, and always will be high-spirited, stubborn, but never wicked. Oh, you could drive me to distraction and back again, my Alley Cat, but couldn’t you make me laugh, too? And make me proud. Like that time you stood up for little Emma Winthrop when the other girls were making fun of her for having a stutter. You pushed a couple of them right on their asses, got in trouble for it. And made me proud.”
Alice shook her head, and Cora took a chance.
Gent
ly, so gently, she laid her hands on Alice’s cheeks. “I love you, Alice. Your ma always loves you.”
When Alice shook her head again, Cora only smiled, lowered her hands to her lap. “You know who else is here, whenever you want to see them? Reenie and Grammy. We’re all so happy you’re home.”
Eyes darting again, Alice rubbed her lips together. “Sir provides. I have to go back. I have a house Sir built for me. I keep it clean. I have to clean the house.”
“I’d just love to see your house.” Cora kept her smile easy and thought dark, bitter, vengeful thoughts. “Where is it?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know.” Now the darting eyes flew back to Cora’s. They held such fear, such confusion. “I got lost. I was wicked, and fell into temptation.”
“We’re not going to worry about that. Not a bit. You look tired now, so I’m going to let you rest. I’m just going to leave something with you, one of my favorite things.”
Rising, Cora reached in her pocket. She’d taken the wallet snapshot out of her purse on the drive in. Gently again, she took Alice’s hand, pressed the photo into it.
In it, Cora stood flanked by her two teenage daughters, their cheeks pressed to hers as they smiled for the camera.
“Your grandpa took that on Christmas morning when you were sixteen. You hold on to that. If you get afraid, you look at that. Now you rest, my Alice. I love you.”
She got as far as the door and Maureen before the tears started.
“It’s all right, Ma. You did everything right.”
“She looks so sick and scared. Her hair, oh, Reenie, her pretty hair.”
“We’re going to take care of her now. We’re all going to take care of her. Come on now. Come on and sit back down. Chase,” Maureen said as soon as they reached the waiting area. “Go get your nana some tea, and for Grammy, too. Sit down, Ma.”
Miss Fancy wrapped her arms around Cora, rocked, soothed.
“Dr. Grove,” Maureen said. “I’d like to speak with you a moment.”
She walked out, scanned the area for something approaching a private spot.
“First,” she began, “you said someone would be evaluating her mental and emotional state. I’m assuming you mean a psychiatrist.”
“That’s correct.”
“I’ll need the name and the qualifications of that doctor. Understand me,” she continued before he could speak. “My mother is, as advertised, a strong woman. But she needs an advocate, and my sister certainly does. That will be me. I need to know everything there is to know about her condition, every part of her condition, and her treatments.”
She drew out her phone. “I’m going to record this, if you don’t mind, so there’s no chance I’ll misunderstand or mix something up later. Before I do that I want to thank you for the care you’ve given my sister so far, and the compassion you showed my mother.”
“I’ll be as thorough as I can. I think it would benefit my patient if you and I and Dr. Minnow had a conversation before she evaluates Alice.”
“Is that Celia Minnow?”
“Yes. Do you know her?”
“I do, so we can skip going into her qualifications. I can meet with both of you whenever you can set it up. Now.” She turned on her phone recorder. “Let’s start with Alice’s physical condition.”
* * *
Bodine took a page out of her mother’s book. She waited until Tate stepped out to make a call, slipped out behind him.
“I have questions.”
“I understand that, Bodine, but—”
She simply took his arm, steered him past the nurses’ station. “You said she’d been raped—before she was brought here. You did a rape kit?”
“That’s right.”
“Is there DNA, his DNA? I’ve watched my share of CSI shows.”
“And you should know it doesn’t work just as it does on TV. It’s going to take time to get results from the kit. And if there’s DNA, we’ll need a suspect to match it up against.”
“She could identify this man.”
In a gesture as weary as he looked, Tate scrubbed at the back of his neck. “She can’t identify herself right now.”
“I understand that. And I understand most of my family is focusing on Alice, how she is more than how she got there. So I’m going to start with how she got there. Where was she, exactly? Who found her?”
“A couple driving home from a night out found her on the side of Route 12. We can’t say where she’d come from, how far she’d walked before she just collapsed there. She was wearing a housedress, house slippers. She didn’t have any identification. She didn’t have a damn thing.”
“How far could she walk dressed like that?” She paced away, paced back. “A few miles maybe.”
“In any direction,” Tate pointed out. “We sent her clothes off to State. Their forensic people will go over them, look for something that might tell us more. But that’s not going to be quick as a whistle, either, Bodine, as all of this takes time. You need to trust me on this. There’s not a stone I won’t turn over to find who did this to her.”
“I’m not doubting that, not one bit. I just need a sense. I need to have something I can work through my own head. The idea she might’ve been snatched up and held since she left home—”
“I don’t think that’s the case. The truck she took back then was found in Nevada. She sent postcards from California.”
“That’s right, that’s right. Nobody much talked about Alice, but I knew that. She must’ve been back around here. She must have been taken around here, Sheriff. She couldn’t have traveled from California or Nevada in a housedress and slippers.”
So that gave her a sense, at least.
“All right.” She nodded, decisively. “That’s something to think about.”
She turned back to him. “You said she’d had children. Where are her children? God, they’d be cousins to me.” As it struck home, she pressed her fingers to her eyes. “She’s my aunt. I never thought about her that way.”
Bodine looked back down the hallway. “I hardly ever thought of her at all.”
She would now, Bodine told herself.
* * *
Bodine convinced her mother to go home with her and Rory, used Grammy as the lever. Grammy couldn’t stay sitting in a hospital waiting room all night. Grammy should come stay at the ranch, and needed a little tending.
Cora wouldn’t budge, so Sam and Chase stayed with her.
They’d take shifts.
Since no one had eaten at the hospital, Bodine warmed up the meal the loyal Clementine had finished cooking and stored away. When two of the women she loved poked at the food on their plates, Bodine put her foot down.
“Looks like Rory’s the only one who’ll get a shot of whisky after this late dinner. I happen to think we could all use one, but I’m damned if you’re putting that whisky on empty stomachs.”
“That’s an incentive.” Miss Fancy managed a half smile, ate a bite of beef. “I’ve held such anger in my heart for that girl.”
“So have I,” Maureen agreed. “Anger, resentment, and all the hard words I’d say to her if I ever got the chance.”
“Oh, stop it, both of you.”
More than a little shocked, Rory sat up straight. “Just hold on, Bodine.”
“The hell I will. The anger and resentment and hard words came from what she did. She took off, and this doesn’t change that careless act. The anger and all the rest was because you were thinking of Nana. You were thinking of your daughter’s hurt, and you your mother’s. Alice did what she did and deserved a good kick in the ass for it.”
